Who She Is:
Born in Alabama in 1936, Marva Collins spent the early part of her teaching career in Chicago public schools before becoming so frustrated with a system she felt was failing its most vulnerable children that she started her own school in 1975. She converted the second floor of her home in the Garfield Park neighborhood into the Westside Preparatory School, where she taught children who had been labeled unteachable, learning disabled, and hopeless by other institutions. Using classic literature, high expectations, and an unshakeable belief in every child's capacity to learn, she produced results so remarkable that they attracted national media attention, a television movie, and visits from two U.S. presidents. Her students, many of them from deep poverty, were reading Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Chaucer by second grade. Collins turned down offers to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education twice, preferring to stay in the classroom where she believed her impact was greatest.
Why She Matters:
Marva Collins demonstrated that the ceiling placed on young children is almost always set by adults, not by the children themselves. Her career is a direct challenge to every assumption about which children are capable of excellence and what early education can accomplish when a teacher refuses to accept low expectations. The children she taught did not succeed despite their circumstances. They succeeded because someone in the room believed, without reservation, that they would. Her story is one of the most powerful arguments ever made for why the quality of early childhood and elementary education is not just an educational issue but a question of justice.
